Family Cheering Neighbors at Race Ripped Apart by Bomb

By Esmé E. Deprez, Annie Linskey and Kathleen Howley -
Apr 16, 2013

Hundreds assembled at sunset
yesterday under clouds streaked pink and blue in the Boston
neighborhood of Dorchester to light candles and sing songs in
the park where 8-year-old Martin Richard played baseball.

They mourned the boy who died with two others in the April
15 bombing of the Boston Marathon and prayed for the three more
members of his family who were wounded.

“You can just look around the park to see what this family
means” to their neighbors, said Stephen Lynch, Dorchester’s
Democratic congressman, who said he’s known Martin’s parents,
Bill and Denise Richard, for 25 years.

Martin was killed along with 29-year-old Krystle Campbell
of suburban Medford. A Boston University graduate student was
also killed, President Robert A. Brown said in an e-mail without
releasing the victim’s name.

Investigators yesterday were still trying to determine
whether the war-like carnage from the bomb blasts, which
President Barack Obama called acts of terror, was the work of a
homegrown radical or foreign subversive.

The Richards and their three children were at the marathon
to root for local runners at the finish line, Lynch said. The
family took a break for ice cream and was back in the cheering
crowd when the first bomb went off, he said.

Bill Richard started lifting people over barricades to help
them flee, then was felled along with his wife and two of their
children when a second bomb went off, Lynch said.

‘Grievous Injury’

Bill was hit by shrapnel. Denise had eye surgery yesterday,
Lynch said. Daughter Jane has “a grievous injury” to her leg,
though it wasn’t amputated. “She is still not out of the
woods,” Lynch said. Only the eldest son, Henry, was uninjured.

Martin was “everything you want in a little kid,” said
Mike Christopher, the boy’s Little League coach. “He pitched.
He played shortstop, third base, first base. He could play
anything you needed.”

“He was the type of kid you want on your team,”
Christopher said. “It’s hard to take.”

Bill Richard released a statement in which he asked for
people’s continued prayers.

“We thank our family and friends, those we know and those
we have never met, for their thoughts and prayers,” he said.
“We also ask for your patience and for privacy as we work to
simultaneously grieve and recover.”

Pellets, Nails

More than 170 people were injured in the attack, many of
whom were hospitalized with lower-extremity wounds from bombs
laden with pellets and nail-like shrapnel. At least 11 people
underwent amputations, hospital officials said.

Liz Norden of Wakefield said her two sons each lost a leg
in the blast.

“It’s like a nightmare,” she said in an interview with a
local television station.

West of Boston in Medford, Krystle Campbell’s mother,
Patricia, tearfully addressed reporters outside the family’s
home. In a case of mistaken identity, she said she and her
husband, William, had initially been told that their 29-year-old
daughter was in surgery after the attack. They learned at 4 a.m.
yesterday that she had in fact been killed.

“We are heartbroken,” Patricia Campbell said, standing
next to her two sons on the family porch behind a single red
rose laid on the steps. “She was such a hard worker at
everything she did.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

‘Beautiful Freckles’

Campbell had “beautiful freckles and bright red hair,”
said Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn, who said she was a “dream
daughter” to her father. A friend, Marc Hordon, posted on his
company’s Facebook page that she “was seldom caught not smiling
and not expressing her opinion.”

The Summer Shack, a seafood restaurant in Cambridge where
Campbell had worked, was “devastated” by her loss, according
to a note posted on its Facebook page.

“She was an incredible woman, always full of energy and
hard at work, but never too tired to share her love and a smile
with everyone,” it said.

The restaurant was closed last night “in honor” of her, a
sign on door said.

The third person killed was a graduate student at Boston
University, Brown said in an e-mail. The victim’s name wasn’t
released. China’s consulate in New York said a Chinese citizen
was among the dead. It didn’t disclose the person’s identity at
the request of her family, according to the consulate website.

Complex Scene

As families of the victims struggled to comprehend the
devastation, authorities in Boston continued scouring what they
said was the most complex crime scene in the history of the
Massachusetts capital. They said they haven’t determined the
motive or perpetrators behind the explosions. Evidence suggested
the bombs were built inside metal pressure cookers and designed
to maim as many people as possible.

Some victims had 40 or more pieces of metal embedded in
their bodies, George Velmahos, chief of trauma surgery at
Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a news briefing. Doctors
there performed four amputations and were monitoring two more at
risk of losing limbs, he said.

“We just completed what the bomb had done,” Velmahos said
of the amputations.